Arundel by E.F. Benson — Read

It is almost doubtful whether it is right to call Heathmoor a village, since there is something plebeian about the word, implying labourers' cottages and public-houses and an admixture of corduroy in the trousers of the male inhabitants with strings tied, for reasons eternally inexplicable, below their knees. Even less is Heathmoor a town, if by a town we denote an assemblage of houses cheek to jowl, streets with tramways or omnibuses and a scarcity of trees and gardens. Indeed, no known word implying the collected domicile of human beings -- which Heathmoor certainly is -- will describe it, and the indication of it necessitates a more verbose method.

It lies at so convenient a distance from the metropolis, and is served by so swift and proper a succession of trains at those hours when Heathmoor travels, that it combines, as its inhabitants unanimously declare, all the advantages of town with the pleasures and fine air of the country. Twenty minutes in a well-padded railway-carriage with bevelled mirrors and attractive photographs of beaches and abbeys and nice clear rivers lands the business men to whom Heathmoor almost entirely belongs in one of the main and central arteries of the London streets, and twenty-three minutes suffices to take them and their wives and daughters home again after they have dined in town and been to the play. The question of those extra minutes is a staple of conversation in Heathmoor, and there is a great deal of high feeling about it, for nobody can see, especially after hours of conversation on the subject, why the railway company should not quicken up the return trains in the evening.